Occator Crater, Ceres

Occator Crater, Ceres

Dawn’s view of Occator crater from an altitude of 1,470 kilometers. This is a composite of two photos taken on August 22, 2015. Because of the large range in brightness, controllers modified Dawn’s observation plan to take pictures with different exposures: a normal exposure for most of the scene, and a short exposure to capture the details of the brightest areas. Occator is more than 90 kilometers in diameter. Following the theme established last year for naming features on Ceres, the International Astronomical Union named this crater for a Roman deity of harrowing.